She lowered her gaze to Nicholas’s hands. Quite decent hands as men’s hands went, passably well manicured, yet they didn’t seem menacing.
Glancing to her left, she reflected that if she had to judge the murderer purely on the basis of hands, Charles would be her guess.
She’d seen Gimby’s body, still felt a chill as the vision swam into her mind. Yet she couldn’t seem to fix the revulsion she felt certain she would feel for whoever had slain Gimby on Nicholas.
Then again, as Charles had pointed out, an accomplice might have committed the actual deed, someone they didn’t yet know about.
She was making a mental note to check with Cook and Figgs to make sure there were no food or supplies mysteriously vanishing—she knew how easy it was to move about any big house at night—when the men finally laid down their napkins and stood.
Rising, too, she fixed a smile on her lips and extended her hand to Charles. “Thank you for seeing me home.”
Taking her hand, faintly smiling, he met her eyes. “I thought you wanted to go into Fowey?”
She stared into his dark blue eyes. How the devil had he known?
Smile deepening—she was quite sure he could read her mind at that moment—he went on, “I’ll drive you in.” His tone altered fractionally, enough for her to catch his warning. “You shouldn’t go wandering the town alone.”
Not only had he guessed where she was going, but why.
Nicholas cleared his throat. “Thank you, Lostwithiel—now Penelope is living here, I confess I’d feel happier if she had your escort.”
She turned to stare at Nicholas. Had he run mad? She was no pensioner of his that he
need be concerned. She drew breath.
Charles pinched her fingers—hard.
She swung back to him, incensed, but he was nodding, urbanely, to Nicholas.“Indeed. We’ll be back long before dinner.”
“Good. Good. I must get back to the accounts. If you’ll excuse me?”
With a brief bow, Nicholas escaped.
Penny watched him depart; the instant he cleared the doorway she swung to face Charles—
“Not yet.” He turned her to the hall. “Get your cloak, and let’s get out of here.”
In the past, she’d been quite successful at bottling up the feelings he provoked; now…it was as if letting loose one set of feelings had weakened her ability to hold back any others. By the time she’d gone upstairs, fetched her cloak, descended to where he waited in the hall, nose in the air allowed him to swing the cloak over her shoulders, then take her arm and escort her outside, she was steaming.
“What in all Hades did you tell him?”
The question came out as a muted shriek.
Charles looked at her, his expression mild, unperturbed; he knew perfectly well why she was exercised but clearly believed himself on firm ground. “Just enough to smooth our way.”
“What?”
He looked ahead. “I told him we had an understanding of sorts. Recently developed and still developing, but with its roots buried in the dim distant past.”
She stopped dead. Stared, aghast and flabbergasted, at him. “You didn’t tell him?”
“Tell him what?”
His clipped accents, the look in his eyes, warned her not to pursue that tack; he’d never breathed a word of their past to anyone, any more than she had.
She found her voice. “We have Lady Trescowthick’s party tonight. He’s invited. What happens when he mentions our ‘understanding’?”
He shook his head, caught her hand and drew her on. “I told him it’s a secret. So secret even our families have yet to hear of it.”